“This scares me.”
My daughter had tears in her eyes
as she looked up from her phone.
We were on the last leg of a
family vacation to the mountains. She’d
spent the week hanging out with her closest cousins, having all kinds of
fun. At that moment we were in the
largest mall in Chattanooga, and my wife and I were buying her stuff. It was the intersection of all good things
for a teenager.
But Kaitlin had been scanning social media reports and comments about the murder of 9 Black
churchgoers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
When she spoke there was grief and fear in my daughter’s 16 year-old eyes. Grief for the families of the
victims. Fear for me.
The massacre happened in
weekly Bible study at a historic Black Methodist church. I teach weekly evening Bible
study at the historic Miles Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
The murderer was a young
white male, a visitor who didn’t fit the typical demographic profile of the
congregation. At my previous pastorate, I
brought in the first all White family to join that historically Black church.
The dead included the pastor,
a socially active preacher in his early 40’s. I’m the pastor of Miles
Chapel CME Church. I'm a community activist, and I’m 43.
My daughter was afraid that
somebody might kill HER DADDY at Bible study.
I wanted to reassure her, to
give her a word of comfort. I told her not to worry about stupid people making stupid comments because they just wanted to start stupid argumetns. My comfort could've been summarized in one word:
“Whatever.”
To be a Christian pastor in
the real world is to be a sheep who’s Shepherd has sent him to preach among
wolves (Mathew 10: 16). And you know
what wolves do to sheep?
The death of more good
Christian preachers at the hands of people who are motivated by hate and guided
by evil is not just possible. It is
inevitable.
Jesus prophesied that, “Yes,
the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God
service. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may
remember that I told you of them.” (Luke 16: 2, 4)
And the racial component isn’t
new either. America’s current racial
system is color-coded, but remember that less than 100 years ago Italian and
Irish were considered distinct minority racial designations. In 1st century Judaea, being Samaritan
or Galilean was a lot like being Irish or Italian in early 19th
century America.
When the Jewish elite got
really frustrated with Jesus they used the racial language of the day to attack
Him.
Then the Jews answered and
said to Him, “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” (John 8: 48) Notice how the accusation of Samaritan-ness
is presented as equal to the accusation of demonism. To be the wrong race was to be inherently
evil.
Even among Jesus’ fellow
Galileans, there was intra-bigotry. When the future apostle Nathanael heard
about Jesus, his first reaction was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John
1:46) And Nathanael was from Cana in
Galilee.
When I was a kid in
Mississippi, we would’ve said that Nathanael was colorstruck. He was
superficially prejudiced against his own racial group.
Racial division and hatred
within the “promised” nation is neither new nor exclusively American. Since at least the Tower of Babel, humans
have transformed our differences into divisions. And when one group of us wanted to prove themselves
spiritually superior but couldn’t, they pulled the race card as if ethnicity
defined the value of one’s soul.
You’re a Samaritan which
means that you have a demon.
He’s from Nazareth which
means He’s just no good.
To
that, Jesus was like, “Whatever.”
He told the Jews, “I do not
have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me.” (John 8: 49) He
didn’t even deal with the (inaccurate) racial designation.
He turned Nathanael’s focus
back onto Nathanael, forcing the “good” Galilean to consider whether he really
was what he considered himself to be, “an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”
(John 1: 47) Jesus didn’t address the
question of whether Cana-skinned Galileans were better than Nazareth-skinned
Galileans.
Jesus knew that all that the
racialized language was a channel from which deeper things flowed: self-hate
and spiritual evil.
Dylan Roof, a
twenty-something year-old White man murdered 9 Black people in their church
after sitting with them for an hour of Bible study and prayer.
According to a survivor of
the massacre, he told them, “I have to do it. You’re [Black people] raping our
women and taking over the country. You have to go.” Then he shot the pastor.
That is 21st
century racism. That is historic
American bigotry. But underlying that prejudice
is the same primal self-hate, the same ancient evil that has always grasped at
ethnic straws to justify itself.
The martyrs of Emanuel AME
Church had not raped Dylan’s women. And
Jesus wasn’t from Samaria, but that didn’t really matter.
The citizens of Nazareth were
no less Galilean than the residents of Cana.
And the martyrs of Emanuel AME Church were equal citizens of the same
nation as Dylan Roof. But that didn’t
really matter.
Dylan Roof didn’t walk into into
Emanuel AME Church to solve a racial problem.
He came only to steal, kill, and destroy.
Racism is a cover and conduit
for deep, spiritual evil. The
Confederate flag might as well be an inverted pentagram with a goat’s head
painted in it. As long as racism,
including the more insidious and covert form of racism that’s now
practiced, continues then my daughter’s
fears will continue to be justified.
Some other evil person might
walk into my church and shoot me because the prince of the power of the air in
America has convinced him that I’m the Samaritan with the demon.
Some other agent of the
spirit of this age might shoot me because I fit the profile of a no-good
Galilean and that makes him “feel in fear for his life.”
It’s happened before. It’s happened before that. And it will happen again because we still don’t
see the personal evil behind our racism.
I do.
But it doesn’t scare me
because I know that God saw it coming.
“But these things I have told
you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them.” (Luke
16: 4)
I’m not afraid because I know
that God has my back.
“These things I have spoken
to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation;
but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”(John 16:3)
I fear not because I’ve made
up my mind that for Jesus I live and for Jesus I will, if necessary, die.
As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long. We
are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” (Romans 8: 36)
I’m going to continue
welcoming visitors of all races. I’m
going to keep encouraging hospitality above suspicion. I ain’t gonna stop teaching Bible study
because my conduct is also a channel for something spiritually deeper: the love and grace of Jesus Christ.
I am a Black sheep among
wolves. And Dylan Roof is not the only
wolf out there. But the Lord is my
shepherd.
So, you know. Whatever.
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer,
community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural
leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is
pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama; executive director
of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership development
for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
#Awordtothewise
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Graves’ work by visiting his personal
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Support by check or money
order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel CME Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
